[Greenbuilding] Green is 9%

[Reuben Deumling]

How interesting. Thanks for sending this.
What I want to know is whether the homes (houses we used to call them) so
labeled used less energy (or water, or whatever) than the houses in the
control group. Of course the occupants would be an important component,
left out of this article.

I've copied the passages below to the list before:

The 437 pg. report by RLW Analytics, which includes the following excerpts
can be found at the www.CALMAC.org site.
It is titled: EVALUATION, MEASUREMENT, AND VERIFICATION OF THE 2004 & 2005
CALIFORNIA STATEWIDE ENERGY STAR® NEW HOMES PROGRAM.

"The billing analysis performed for CZ8 and CZ12 [CA climate zones 8 & 12]
indicates that participants use more electricity and fewer therms than
non-participants. Controlling for
housing characteristics as well as demographic information, ENERGY STAR®
homes
participants used more energy with the exception of CZ12 gas usage. The
demographic
question results all point to non-participants using more energy than
participants, and
even controlling for these variables, we see participants with higher
usage." (p.16)


"Occupant Behavior is as Important as Building Characteristics
Our billing analysis results, showing negative program savings in climate
zones that the
metering [modeling?] indicates positive savings, highlighted the fact that
occupant behavior is one of the largest drivers of energy consumption. For
this reason, future evaluations may want  to explore ESH occupant
behaviors. If people who choose to buy ENERGY STAR® homes are already
conservation minded people and therefore purchase the homes to be
ecofriendly or "green" than they may be conservative in their energy use
already. This
would reduce the energy usage, and therefore the energy savings of the home.
Conversely a person who knows they already consume a lot of energy may
purchase an
ENERGY STAR® home because even with no change in their behavior, they will
still have
reduced bills; a person may even increase their comfort level, for example
by lowering
the temperature in their home during the summer, because they think their
home is
more efficient and they still may consume less energy.
Whether one or the other behavior is more prevalent would not only have a
significant
impact on estimated savings, but also has implications for how to best
market a new
construction residential energy efficiency program." ( p.159)
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